Artist Inspiration – Interview with Toobzmuir

I’ve just returned from a trip visiting family and friends in different places, and my last leg of this latest journey was visiting the wonderful human and artist Toobzmuir. I was lucky to get the chance to stay at his place for about a month and we were able to start some new work for another 2-person exhibition coming up in 2025. Last year, we had the honor of having a 2-person exhibition at Copro Gallery in Los Angeles CA, and next year’s will be in Virginia at Alexander/Heath Contemporary Art Gallery. I’ve always wanted to do an interview with him and this just felt like good timing, as I’ve returned inspired and ready for what’s ahead. Also, without going into too much of an introduction, he is one of my favorite artists and just happens to be one of my favorite humans as well. We’ve worked together on many different sorts of things, some collaborative pieces and some bouncing around ideas for our personal individual work, and a whole lot of thought-sharing and life unraveling and supportive reflecting. In the development of our work for our last 2-person show, we’ve seen each other grow and learn so much. I’ve admired his work for a good while and cherish our connection dearly. He’s such an open, thoughtful and heartening human to know, and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to share his work and words here, and I hope you enjoy our conversation Q&A below:

 

To me, your art is an experience, and something that can shift over time or with a new perspective. I find this to be one of the things that is so fulfilling as an artist when it comes to the making of art as it develops and observing one’s own art over time, as well as being a viewer/admirer of others’ art. What do you find to be a fulfilling aspect of art?

To find in the exploration of something that unlocks a part or certain parts of us that we know that are hard to explain. I do not understand fully how we get there other than the application of materials onto a surface and allowing ourselves to be guided by instinctive trust. Getting to know these feelings of the uncertainty is something new every time and that’s the invigorating experience I find to be most shifting in what I want to have moving, developing, and offering not only for myself but provide a connection that offers the viewer something they have never seen or felt as well. I love the unknowns so incredibly much so I want to help myself and others walk into this understanding of something in us that stimulates a wandering in the what’s created. Worlds that bring up consciousness of what’s being shared and a place to feel however our journeys clarify what it is we think to be human or beyond.

 

 

What do you feel has been your strongest pull to continue to make art?

There have been times I have self sabotaged my relationship and the misunderstanding of what I know about my connection with art. It’s taken time to develop what this is for me. I know now I have always had this want to see what I’m capable of or also that it’s okay to never know that as well. The idea of thinking of infinite amounts of ways to open up to is something overly exciting to me. The learning is something I love to do my best to be gentle with. I think for me in what I know about myself is very childlike, a bairn in where I float myself while my hands are moving to a rhythm that has no structure. Free forming our lives as we go and watching something in me become still but yet very moving.

 

 

When I first saw your work online, I was equally drawn to your writing. You very often post these wonderfully moving and mysterious paragraphs that accompany your art. In them, you are ambiguous yet also seem to be precisely descriptive at the same time. They are beautiful little treasures that flow so nicely with the art yet still seem to circumvent describing the images. As someone who does similar things with the pairing of art and writing, I was really intrigued by your posts, and I know many others are drawn to them as well. What are some things that inspire your word flow?

Yes! Ah the writing, it’s yet another way to channel. These words grant me so many ways to say what’s directly in front of us and what’s within the layers that went into what we feel when sharing the art. It comes from numerous thoughts while working and the journey. While writing, I allow what’s heard in the present and incorporate how that correlates with what’s going on in the piece and I pull from current personal events. It’s hard to explain honestly. It comes from years of writing spoken word experimental free stream of consciousness. It’s fun to make what seems nonsensical into something powerful and deliberate. This world doesn’t have to be what we experience. We seem to duplicate and emulate and find that to be accepted. I want to be out there. I want to breathe with it all and find how it all can give life with a type of attention that brings a place of what is at times I find to be missing.

 

 

You and I have gone on some great hikes, even had a chance to do a little nature art together, and there are some similarities and synchronicities there in both of our work for sure. I know that nature is a key component to your subconscious aesthetic as well as mood and feeling. What are some things that you feel come through you and into your art from that connection with nature?

We certainly have! As I’m learning what it is to understand how my living with (CVD) colorblind vision deficiency affects and honestly does not affect me. You have been helping me a great deal with getting better acquainted with colors and how they work in a way that I wasn’t sure if I could learn. The more we share and communicate about it all it seems I’m able to see them like how I feel others are capable of. With that being said the connection with nature is of course something vital to our personal interrelation with how we want to blend our understanding better with all that we use our senses for when it comes to our subconscious. The nature art is something I have yet to explore enough to get why and how we will find ourselves seeing that combine. For me at least I feel that there needs to be more time with that and that’s exciting because while I’m gathering materials and looking for the perfect object to place in the perfect space needed to make the work satisfying I’m reeling my thoughts with mark making and ideas that share a similarity in what’s to come and how I have little idea how all of this meshes. The textures and shadow casting from natural lighting and how we find all of the things we have to think about while seeing what comes of it all is so interesting in the process. Also it’s very important to get out and see the way nature provides us this place to spread our thoughts out and watch as it all takes flight like we did when watching the vultures ever so lightly soar past and above us. So much to all of that and how we are with our work in the way we dance around to watch it all appear before our being.

 

 

 

What does connection mean to you?

It means a great deal. When it comes to our connection it’s a synchronicity that shares a way of being. A freedom like breath and movement. Something I have never experienced till I met you and I am grateful for its way that it has shown me a place of wonderment and grace. The patience behind and within how we work in our own personal worlds gifts us a merging that is very special. We are already connected in so many ways in all we do and how we choose and allow the world to move through us that it’s wild to have this opportunity to work beside each other and find that connection with all the other ways we bond in life. So it’s a very important part of us that is always felt and acknowledged.

 

 

What are some other ways that you create and connect aside from drawing and painting, and how do you tend to view the incorporating or balancing of all of those things you do?

You and I have explored sculpting last year, working with wood and some nature art. I want to get back into making contemporary baskets and finding ways to mix the sculpting of wood and the weaving. Also who knows what else we can configure with in all of the possibilities to explore. Photography and the making of short films and music. Maybe even some performance? I like to give it all a try and those are some other ways I like to express.

 

 

How have you felt about collaborating? Has it shifted anything about how you work or experience art-making?

This goes with the connection we have shared and I absolutely love collaborating with you. The experience of us both learning and growing as individuals and together is something I look forward to every time. The freedom and the impulsive nature of how we work is exciting to witness and we both get stimulated by the unknowns that appear that we make happen without knowing. That’s the magic. We are the magic that makes for the collaborating a helpful tool in learning so much. I can’t stop wanting to be doing, you have shown me so much in all that’s been shifting and the perspectives in our talks and all that is shared and I have been told I do this for you so I’m grateful for our world we share and all that is gives.

 

 

Thanks so much for sharing this glimpse into a wonderful dialogue that you and I so often get the chance to have. Anything else you’d like to add or say?

Thank you for you and the words you first asked me about when we first started talking. “What’s holding you back?” That has always stuck with me and it comes to the forefront of my thoughts when starting something new or in the process of not knowing what the hell I’m doing. I love not knowing and that in itself shows me that I’m not holding back like I used to. I want to offer the world this freedom in the work and share the strange world in which we live in a place to feel. Constantly hallucinating on what’s normal and find ourselves reaching beyond. I’d love to take this and the many ideas we both share on the road and experience more connection with others and what this is in all we’ve discussed and shared here.

Thank you so much for your mind and time and all that you have given me in the past years we have shared.

 

Grateful for you too, Toobz. Thank you as always for the sharing of yourself, and for the thoughtful insight and dialogue.

To visit Toobzmuir’s website and web shop, click here: toobzmuir.com

You can find more of his art and words on Instagram here: @toobzmuir